Wednesday, April 25, 2007

News and Blogs Together, Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Rural residents' use of meth has worse effects than use by urban residents? "The study showed that rural addicts began using meth at a younger age, were more likely to use the drug intravenously and were more likely to also be dependent on alcohol or cigarettes. They also exhibited more signs of psychosis than urban addicts _ 45 percent vs. 29 percent, according to the study. Grant said the findings, released in the March/April edition of The American Journal on Addictions, suggest rural addicts are at higher risk for psychiatric and medical problems such as infectious diseases and lung and liver cancer. That's troubling, she said, because addicts living in rural areas have less access to care--because of distance and transportation issues--than those living in cities."

Pam Clifton at Think Outside the Cage has good posts here and here on private prisons and potentials for disruptions (aka riots) that are rarely figured into expected costs when shipping inmates out of state, focusing particularly on this "disruption" by AZ inmates at an IN private prison, although the IN gov says he's just trying to get state residents a chance to get good prison guard experience. And Talk Left gives its two cents worth here as well. (You know, it may not have been the best time for this VT legislator to propose "saving money" by sending its states' inmates out of state. . . .)

While you're at TOC, check out Pam's good catch of this American Prospectarticle on the failure of our coca eradication effort in Colombia, more "success" in our War on (Some) Drugs.

From CrimProf Blog, this article on the difficulties we pose for wives of inmates despite the clear evidence that marriage (if it's sincere) is one of the absolute best anti-recidivism mechanism we have. A government-sponsored dating program in prisons would probably work better than anything else we have going, and think of the tv movies.

I can't figure this one out. Young crack users, being healthier, survive their cardiac arrests better than old ones. Is this good news or bad???

Here's the headline and question for this article: When Are Minimum Legal Drinking-age And Beer-tax Policies The Most Effective? And here's one part of the answer: "Our findings suggest that some of the varying results across past research may simply indicate that a given public policy may not have the same effectiveness in all places and times." And here's the other part: "The more a community regulates alcohol availability, the less additional benefit it might expect to achieve from enacting any specified alcohol-policy initiative," said Ponicki. "If a given community has very few existing alcohol-policy restrictions, any proposed new constraint would represent a sizeable proportional change in the overall cost of drinking and driving. If another community already has extremely strong alcohol restrictions, the same proposed new constraint would represent a much smaller proportional change in the full price of drinking. The proposed new constraint thus seems more significant to drinkers in the first community, and would be expected to have more impact on drinking and driving. This paper's analyses supported this expectation for MLDA and beer taxes."

Adam Kolber at Neuroethics & Law Blog finds this SSRN abstract of a new article on the social perception of crime that can possibly lend some assistance to efforts to figure out what punishments are legitimate and how offenses are perceived. Plus offering a means to plot those perceptions all out. Let's keep an eye on where this goes, shall we?

Finally, you know we're in trouble when Captain America gets busted. We'll just let the story speak for itself:

MELBOURNE, Fla. (AP) - A doctor dressed as Captain America was arrested after groping a woman at a bar and fighting with her boyfriend, authorities said.

Patrons at the bar were dressed in costumes as part of a bar crawl Saturday night, police spokeswoman Jill Frederiksen said.

A man carrying a burrito and dressed as Captain America approached her, began to say dirty things and touched her inappropriately, police said. He then brawled with her boyfriend, authorities said.

Several patrons who had dressed as the super hero were asked to step outside so the woman could identify the suspect, Frederiksen said.

She picked out Raymond Adamcik, 54, police said.

After he was arrested, he tried to flush marijuana down a toilet at a police station, police said.

Adamcik was released on a $2,500 bond and faces charges of possession of marijuana, destruction of evidence, disorderly conduct and battery.

A secretary at Adamcik's office said he was on leave and that the office was not accepting messages for him.

Well, okay, one last word. Just remember this story when people ask why we're interested in corrections sentencing.